This invention relates to a harvesting aid for fruit, particularly vine-borne fruit such as grapes, specifically a vehicular harvesting aid which transports workers down a row of vines to allow the workers to sever the fruit while at their work stations and have the severed fruit automatically conveyed to a discharge point on the vehicle.
Grape harvesting is done either manually, primarily by migrant workers, or mechanically using automated grape harvesting machines. Although hand picking is usually preferred, the cost is high and the future availability of migrant workers is unsure. Therefore much effort has been put into the development of mechanical grape harvesters.
Grape harvesting machines fall into two broad categories: selective and non-selective. Selective machines have been designed so that only whole bunches of ripe grapes are removed from the vines. None of the selective grape harvesters made to date has been commercially successful.
Non-selective grape harvesting machines either beat or shake the individual berries from the grape vines. Several manufacturers are commercially producing machines which do this. Since the grape berries are shaken or beaten from the vine, severe damage is usually done to the berry. This always precludes their use for raisin or for table grapes. Some wine grape varieties cannot withstand the violent treatment of these mechanical grape harvesters.
In the early 1960's some machines were developed for moving workers through a vineyard for harvesting wine grapes. These machines were not very successful and were abandoned in favor of non-selective mechanical harvesters. Therefore, at present all whole bunch grape harvesting is done by hand, primarily by migrant workers
When picking raisin grapes, which must be picked by the whole bunch, the worker commonly carries a circular pan which is filled with about 20 pounds of grapes that the worker has cut from the vines. The pan is carried to the middle of the path between the rows of grapes. The grapes are spread on paper trays lying on the ground so that the grapes are dried by the sun. The worker then carries the pan back to the vine and starts the process all over again.
An average worker will pick 350 trays of grapes per day. Time and motion studies show that the worker spends about one-third of his or her time cutting the grape bunches and the remaining moving to and from the paper trays and spreading the grapes on the paper trays.